David Brooks on Facing Harsh Times with “Defiant Humanism”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: As the year draws to a close, time to reassess how to foster stronger connections, at home, at work, and throughout our lives. David Brooks is an opinion columnist at “The New York Times.” And that is the focus of his latest book, “How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.” He joins Walter Isaacson to explore what it means to practice empathy in an increasingly lonely world.

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WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And, David Brooks, welcome to the show.

DAVID BROOKS, AUTHOR, “HOW TO KNOW A PERSON” AND OPINION COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Oh, it’s good to be back.

ISAACSON: Yes. This book, “How to Know a Person,” is philosophical and a great narrative in it, but it also has some useful tips. And one of them is like, if you really want to know a person, start by saying, tell me about growing up. So, I’m going to start there and ask you about growing up and how it made you a detached observer at first?

BROOKS: Yes. The story I tell in the book is if anybody remembers that movie “Fiddler on the Roof,” you know how warm and huggy and emotional Jewish families can be. They’re always singing and dancing. And so, I come from the other kind of Jewish family. So, we were pretty cerebral. The culture in our family was think Yiddish, act British. And so, we were all up in our heads. So, if you went to our Thanksgiving dinner table, you could have a nice conversation about the evolutionary roots of lactose intolerance or the history of Victorian funerary monuments. And so, I emerged not surprisingly as maybe the most — not the most intimate person on the face of the earth, maybe the most — not the most emotionally available. And so, I’ve been on a journey really over 15 years, and you’ve known me for a long time, Walter, to try to become a more — a person better at recognizing my own emotions, recognizing other people’s emotions, better intimacy and better connecting with people. And so, the book is partly, you know, we writers work out our stuff in public. And so, I just wanted to become a much better person at understanding the people around me and making them feel respected, heard, listened to, and lit up.

ISAACSON: You know, one of the oldest pieces of wisdom I think we have in humanity is from the Temple of the Oracle of Delphi, that’s, know thyself. So, before you went on a journey to know other people, how did you know thyself?

BROOKS: Well, I — you know, I actually found myself knowing myself by knowing others. I’m a little suspicious of just sitting in a room and staring at your navel. That’s just not my style. But I find by inter — by having conversations with other people, you say, how do you see this? And then you think, oh, I see a little differently. And so, to me, the art of conversation is really the art of being a human being. And so, you know, I learned, like most of us, I was not as good as I thought I was at being a good conversationalist, at taking a mediocre conversation and turning it into a memorable conversation. And one of the things I focused on — in the book and in life is just asking really good questions. Most find — I sometimes go to a party and I leave and I think, you know, that whole time nobody asked me a question. And I found that only about 30 or 40 percent of humanity are question askers. So, after I get to know somebody, I try to ask them big questions, and these are questions like, if this next five years is a chapter in your life, what would the chapter be about? Or what would you do if you weren’t afraid? What role does fear play in your life? If we met a year from now, what would we be celebrating? And these are questions that really, you know, people don’t have easy answers to these questions, that they have to think about it. And then, we have a great conversation about some of the deeper aspects of life, and we get to know each other. And in that way, we get to know ourselves.

ISAACSON: Has social media helped or hurt us in building these skills?

BROOKS: It’s been massively terrible. You know, if you look at the social statistics of suicide, depression, mental health problems, the number of Americans who say they have no close personal friends has gone up by fourfold since 2000, the amount of time we spend with our friends has gone down 60 percent. And social media has just been — had this corroding effect on our ability to have relationships. And part of the problem is that in social media, there’s judgment everywhere and understanding nowhere. People are performing themselves, but they’re not really vulnerable with each other. They’re not really having the kind of communication that human beings require. And so, part of the book is just like an antidote to an age of shallow performative relationships and to get us back to having, like, real conversations, to talk to people who are depressed, to talk to people who are suffering from grief, how to talk to people across difference. I think social media, the accumulating effect on our culture, has been surprisingly terrible.

ISAACSON: You know, you talk about this epidemic of loneliness. That people say now that they don’t have real close friends. But it’s got to be more than social media. I mean — we’ve ever since Robert Putnam did bowling alone, we’ve had this problem on our radar screen. What are the other reasons?

BROOKS: Yes. So, I could tell a technological story, which is the social media story. But as you say, Walter, you know, social media is everywhere, but Ghana is not having the loneliness crisis we’re having. Denmark is not having a loneliness crisis. Japan is not. There’s something unique about the culture of social media as it interacts with a bunch of other causes. Some of them are, like you said, Robert Putnam, we’re just less active in civic life. Some of it is we have a very individualistic culture, which makes — it gives us a lot of personal freedom, but makes us pretty bad at social convention. But the piece of the story I sort of focus on is skills. To get to know another person, to cure loneliness, you’ve got to be open hearted, and that’s part of it, but it’s not enough. You’ve got to be able to practice certain practical social skills. Some of it, like we’ve been talking about, having — being great at conversation. Some of it is like, how do you critique somebody in your workplace with care so they feel supported while you’re critiquing them? How do you break up with someone without crushing their heart? How do you host a dinner party so everybody feels included? You know, I saw a study just a couple weeks ago, the number of young men who’ve never asked anybody out on a date is super high these days. And why? It’s because they stink at flirting, and they don’t know how to ask people out. And so, it’s a basic loss of social skills that we somehow have failed to teach succeeding generations.

ISAACSON: It’s a basic loss of social skills, but you also talk about a loss of moral knowledge, and that seemed pretty profound when I was reading that. How does that connect to the loss of social skills?

BROOKS: Yes. Well, what is morality? Like, we have these — sometimes we think morality is obeying the Ten Commandments, and I agree, it is sort of that. But mostly, morality is being considerate to people in the complex circumstances of life. In other words, morality is something that happens every second of every day as we treat each other. And the first moral act is the act of paying attention to someone, is casting a gaze on them that is warm and compassionate as understanding. If you cast a gaze that’s cold, you’ll find people are untrustworthy. If you cast a gaze with your eyes that is scared, you’ll find threat everywhere. But if you cast a gaze that’s generous and tender, you’ll find people involved in the struggles of life doing the best they can. So, to me, what we have failed to do is to teach — to do this thing called moral formation. And moral formation is this pompous word, but it really means three things. The first is helping people restrain their natural selfishness. The second is helping people find an ideal, some cause or truth they can serve. And third, it’s just these concrete social skills of treating people with consideration in the complex circumstances of life. And people used to teach this. Schools felt it was their job. This is what we do. We teach people to be considerate to each other. And now, the schools are about getting a job, getting kids into Harvard. But they’re not about character formation anymore. And I think there’s been a terrible cost to them.

ISAACSON: You talk about the importance of having real conversations and you made a distinction about two types of conversation that struck me so much that every time I listen to a conversation, I apply your metric, which is a conversation in which people are comment making, in other words, they want to make a comment, they want top somebody’s last comment and say, oh, you know, I can top that. And a conversation in which people are storytelling. They’re telling a narrative. You even mentioned our mutual friend Michael Lewis, and you said, why is he so popular? For me, the reason he’s so popular is he’s from New Orleans and he just tells stories. Every time you ask him something, it’s a storytelling conversation.

BROOKS: Yes. I mean, one of the things — first, the negative, how not to do conversation, as you refer to it, and it’s really — I found it really resonated with people in a way I didn’t anticipate, is don’t be a topper. And so, if you tell me, oh, I just had this terrible flight. I was on the tarmac for two hours. I’m going to say, I know exactly what you’re going through. I was — had a terrible flight three weeks ago. I was on the tarmac for four hours. And it sounds like I’m trying to relate to you, but really what I’m doing is trying to say, let’s stop talking about you. Let’s start talking about me and my superior experiences. And so, one conversational rule is don’t be a topper. But then, on the plus side, as you said, it’s — just make it storytelling conversations. So, even in politics, when I’m interviewing people for my job, I no longer ask them, what do you believe? I ask them, how did you come to believe that? And that gets them telling me a story about their values, their family, and suddenly, we’re in storytelling mode and you just get a much richer version.

ISAACSON: Part of theme in this book is the need to have empathy to really deeply feel the person around you, and I’m wondering, are there people who are hardwired in some ways that they’re not very good at empathy and how would they overcome that?

BROOKS: You know, in my view, empathy is like athletic ability. Some of us are born with more and some of us are born less, but we can all get better with practice. And to me, empathy is three things. We think of it as just like a gush of emotion, but empathy is three separate skills. The first is the skill of mirroring. If I want to catch the emotion you’re feeling, and that’s just like instinctive. You’re angry, I feel that. You’re sad, I feel that. So, I’m mirroring. The second is mentalizing. And that’s where I use my cognitive abilities to imagine what you’re going through. So, if it’s your first day on the job, well, I’ve been on first day on a job. I know the mix of emotions that happen on that. You’re excited to be there. You’re anxious. You’re not going to live up. You’re meeting all these new people. And so, I can mentalize what you’re going through. And then the third is caring. So, con artists are really good at understanding what other people are thinking, but they don’t care. And so, we don’t say they’re empathetic. So, you’ve got to be effectively caring. And effective care is doing the thing the other person needs, not the thing you feel most comfortable with. And so, I read about a case by a guy named Rabbi Irwin Kukla (ph), and he had a woman in his congregation that had suffered a brain injury, and sometimes she fell to the floor. She just fell. And she’s told Kukla (ph), you know, when people see me fall to the floor, they rush to pick me up because they’re so uncomfortable seeing an adult lying on the ground. But what I really need at that moment is for somebody to just get down on the ground with me. And I think that’s like the definition of empathy. Some — just the ability to get down on the ground metaphorically or literally with another human being and offer them what they need at a time of stress.

ISAACSON: You’ve been writing a lot about artificial intelligence. I know you went out to see some of OpenAI. I’m wondering, can artificial intelligence, can A.I. ever feel empathy, ever know a person?

BROOKS: No, no. You know, I talked to a lot of A.I. people and they say, oh, we’re going to achieve this thing called artificial general intelligence, which is the machines will think the way humans do. And then, I call neuroscientists and I say, do you think they’re close to having machines to think like humans? And the neurosciences would say, well, that would be a nice trick because we don’t know how humans think. And so, I think — one of the reasons I’m less worried than other people about A.I., is I don’t think it’s going to have anything close to human capabilities for a long, long time and maybe ever. And so, it can’t do basic things like understanding, like, understand what it’s doing. Human beings have a mental model of the world and A.I. doesn’t, it just predicts language. Human beings have the ability to think with our bodies. And one of the things that’s really struck me researching the book is that I’ve always interviewed neuroscientists for various books I’ve been writing, but now they’re much more into the body. They’re much more thinking that the brain is not just some isolated thing up in the skull, it’s in constant communication through the vagus nerve and other things with the body, and there’s neurons in the body. And the neurons in the body, to simplify things, are feeling, they’re producing emotions. And those emotions are telling us what we should value and what we should not value, who we like and who we don’t like. And A.I. can mimic that. It can copy that because humans express their emotions and language, but A.I. can’t have emotions. So, I don’t worry about A.I. taking over the world because I don’t think it’s anywhere close to what we have.

ISAACSON: The first half of your book is mainly about personal interactions. And then, the second half you apply that more to the social strife, the things we’re facing today. And there’s a sentence, if I can read it to you, it says, “Many of our big national problems arise from the fraying of our social fabric. If we want to begin repairing big national ruptures, we have to learn to do the small things well.” So, how does your book apply to this awful period we’re in, in terms of our social fabric?

BROOKS: Yes. Well, you just look at the — and we’re living in such a brutalizing times. You look at the big dates that define our century. September 11th, January 6th, October 7, 2023, there’s just brutalizing. And so, we’ve living with this time of where it’s — we’re under assault, where there’s violence, where there’s rhetorical violence, where there’s canceling. And my view is the only really effective and practical response to that kind of climate is a kind of defiant humanism, that is saying, the world around me is brutal, but I’m still going to leave with curiosity. I’m going to still lead with trust. I’m going to leave with vulnerability. And sometimes, I’ll be betrayed, but I’m still going to lead with trust because I think most of the time if I lead with trust, the person I’m encountering will lead with trust. And if I lead with curiosity, most of the time, we’re going to get to know each other. We’re going to have a good relationship. And so, in a brutalizing age, it’s important to know how to have conversations across difference, across racial difference, ethnic difference, political difference. And one of the tips I’ve learned when people come to me with critique, because they disagree with me from the left or the right, is — my first instinct is get all defensive. But I think what I really want to do in those circumstances is try to stand in their standpoint. It’s to ask them three or four or five times, tell me more about what you think. How did you come to believe that? Tell me more. What am I missing here? And if I ask them three or four questions about their point of view, I may not agree with them, or I may not persuade them, but at least I’m showing them respect. And in any conversation, respect is like air. When it’s present, nobody notices, but when it’s absent, it’s all anybody can think about. So, when we’re having conversations across difference, we have to ask them again and again, what am I missing here? We have to show respect those type of conversations.

ISAACSON: Those of type of conversations, you just described something Benjamin Franklin wrote about in a piece called “On Conversation,” and he said it was a key to the democracy we’re trying to create. Democracy is so threatened around the world. Is what you’re talking about one of the keys to saving democracy?

BROOKS: Yes. I mean, we think of democracy as this thing that happens in the voting booth, or maybe in a legislature somewhere. But democracy is basically about human encounter. It’s about people with different points of view coming together and trying to understand each other, coming together and trying to compromise, coming together and trying to solve problems, and maybe add to each other’s viewpoints. And so, to me, democracy is elementally about the kind of social skills that I’m talking about here. And the other thing about the book, and as you mentioned Benjamin Franklin, I think we’ve both been affected by Franklin, you know, the idea of self-improvement is such an American emphasis that we’re just going to get better and better. And Franklin was like the poster child for self-improvement. He was constantly self-improved, through his whole life. Just could not stop trying to learn more, be more. Obviously, the virtues — the list of virtues he concocted when he was a kid. And I think we all — at least I follow in that. Like, I think I’m not an exceptional person, but I am kind of a grower. And in being a grower, I am definitely following Benjamin Franklin.

ISAACSON: David Brooks, thank you so much for joining us.

BROOKS: Oh, thank you, Walter. It’s always a pleasure to be with you.